Major religious festivals, harvest and regional New Year celebrations, and the temple festivals that round out one of GK's broadest topics.
India's major religious festivals span every faith practised in the country, and each is tied to a specific religious event or figure.
Each of India's major recognised religions has at least one festival that regularly appears in GK sections, usually tested as a simple "which festival marks what" pairing.
Anchor each festival to a single person or event: Diwali to Rama's return, Eid-ul-Fitr to the end of a fasting month, Christmas to a birth, Gurpurab to a Guru's birth, Mahavir Jayanti to a Tirthankara, Khordad Sal to a prophet.
Many of India's biggest festivals are tied to the harvest calendar and regional New Year celebrations, with different names in different states for what is often a similar underlying seasonal event.
Baisakhi carries a second layer of significance beyond the harvest: it also marks the founding of the Khalsa Panth by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699.
Most harvest festivals mark only the season, but Baisakhi marks both the Punjab harvest and the founding of the Khalsa Panth — a detail that turns a simple state-pairing question into a two-part one.
A smaller set of festivals is tied to specific temples or major pilgrimage events rather than a whole state or religion at large.
The Kumbh Mela's four rotating locations are a frequently tested detail; Puri, despite hosting the major Jagannath Temple and Rath Yatra, is not one of the four Kumbh Mela sites.
Puri's claim to fame is the Rath Yatra at the Jagannath Temple. The Kumbh Mela belongs to a separate set of four river-bank cities entirely.
All 6 questions with a full answer key.
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